"The lady jumped up with a scream, and seized hold of Mr. Robinson's arm, who seeming to forget what he was about, shook her off, and fell to raving to me to see that the steamer didn't touch us. By thunder, sir, there was the cowardly brute slanting her flying length as though to cross our hawse, but clearly aiming to strike us right amidships. I shouted to the men to make ready and 'bout ship, and a minute after I shoved the tiller over, and the yacht rounded like a woman waltzing. But before we had gathered way the steamer was after us. The lady sent up scream after scream. Mr. Robinson stood motionless, seeing as plain as I that if the steamer meant to sink us there was no seamanship in this wide world that could stop her; and I saw the men throwing off their shoes and half stripping themselves, ready for what was to come.
"The steamer headed dead to strike our weather-beam; she rushed at us with the foam boiling over her bows; once more I chucked the schooner right up into the wind, and the steamer went past us like a rocket under our stern. I looked at her and sha'n't ever forget what I saw. There was a white-haired man, with white whiskers and bareheaded, roaring and raging at us in the grasp of three or four seamen. 'Twas like a death-struggle. A chap who looked as if he had just seized the wheel was grinding it hard over to get away from us; and so the steamer fled past, more like a nightmare than a reality, and in a few minutes was standing with full speed to the norrard, where, in less than a quarter of an hour, she faded slick out of sight.
"It was some time after I had left the 'Evangeline' and was at home before I got to know the meaning of this here wonderful adventure. The party, it turned out, was no less than the wife of the general as owned the 'Violet,' and she was running away with Mr. Robinson. May be our men had talked about our going to the Mediterranean, but anyhow the general who was in London at the time, got scent that his wife had bolted with Mr. Robinson in the 'Evangeline,' and in less than twenty-four hours he was after us in his steamer. He tracked us by speaking the vessels we passed; and the light airs and calms we had encountered easily allowed him to overhaul quickly. And it turned out that when he had fairly sighted us, he sent the man at the wheel forward, and took the helm himself. The crew dursn't express their wonder aloud, though they knew he was no hand at steering, not to mention the mad agitation he was in, and they let him have his way when he headed the steamer for us, expecting that he merely wished to close us in order to speak; but when I put my helm down and the steamer passed, and they spied the general rounding his craft evidently to run us down, they threw themselves upon him to save their own lives as well as ours. That was the sight I saw as the steamer rushed past. A few moments after they had gone clear the poor old fellow was seized with an attack of apoplexy, which killed him right off, and thereupon they headed right away to England with the dead body aboard.
"What do you think of this for a yarn? Would any one suppose such vengefulness could exist in a white-haired man that had known his seventieth birthday? What did he want to go and try and drown me and my mates for? We weren't running away with the female party. But the world's full of romantic capering, sir; and I tell you what it is—'tain't all fair sailing even in yachts, modest and pretty as the divarsion is."